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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Sew Many Ideas…

Sew many options... What am I talking about? Well, I’m having a go at the Rebecca Collins pattern that Lynda has raved about and I now understand why she didn’t stop at 1 quilt. There are so many options to sew these units together that you could easily sew this pattern over and over again and never end up with two the same.

Basically you start with a 2 - 9” squares (a light and a dark) and cut them on the diagonal. (You could swap your lights and darks with friends to really jazz things up like I did)

With right sides together (a light and a dark triangle), and measuring from the long bias edge you cut a 2 1/4” strip and sew a 1/4” seam on both sides (creating a tube) and you sew a 1/4” seam along the long edge of the remaining big triangle. Then using a ruler you square up the large HST triangle to 4 1/2” and cut 5 - 2 1/2” HST from the tube by lining up the 2 1/2” marks on both edges of a square ruler with the sewing line. Here’s a great post explaining it better. If you have the Eleanor Burns HST Triangle Ruler then this is a perfect use for it or even the Wonder Cut Ruler.

Then with your 5 little HST and 1 large HST you can arrange them to make new patterns.

I quite like this one above and that was very close to being the arrangement…but then I played with the blocks some more to see what else I liked.

This one seemed too busy even though it was full of subsidiary patterns like stars.

Then I tried hearts with a zig-zag border, but I would never keep that straight when I moved it to the sewing machine.

So I settled on this one :o) As the colours I have in each block don’t always convincingly read light or dark I thought grouping the same fabrics together in “little parcels” would be the most effective way to show off the fabrics. It also seems to be a pattern that doesn’t rely as heavily on the light and dark effects needed in some of the other arrangements. I’m quite surprised at the number of possible variations and have already started to think about a layer cake being used this way… wouldn’t that be pretty?

I am not enjoying this at all, it is mostly I think, because of the fabric choices, but doing it with a layer cake, Hmmm. I just happen to have one I bought ages ago at Rocheberrie for a Myton Hospice fundraiser.

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